Earl Adams, Jr. serves as Of Counsel in DLA Piper’s Litigation and Government Affairs practices. His practice focuses on representing clients before all branches of state and local government, including administrative agencies, and in development transactions involving public-private partnerships. Adams previously served as Chief of Staff to the Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony G. Brown, where he worked on issues relating to expanding and improving health care, economic development, increasing access to higher education and providing veterans with better services and resources. Adams serves on the Board of Directors for several organizations, including the Baltimore Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, the Seed School of Maryland, and the President’s Advisory Council for the Greater Baltimore Committee. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Adams worked for American Airlines as a revenue management analyst. Adams is a graduate of Morehouse College, earned an M.P.A. from the Harvard Kennedy School and a J.D. from Boston College Law School. He resides in Prince George’s County, Md. with his wife and their two sons. Adams is an appointee of the Governor of Maryland.

Lynn Chapman serves as president of NVS, a technology and business consulting firm. He has experience in business, academics, and public policy. He co-founded a fiber optic communications company and then spent more than 20 years in the telecommunications industry holding senior management positions in a number of technology firms in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region. Chapman has management experience in both venture start-up companies and Fortune 500 corporations.  He is experienced in leading organizations in both expanding and contracting economic environments and has performed research focused on the impact of monetary policy on regional employment. He is a former board member of The Myositis Association, Enterprise Mentors International and Southern Virginia University. Chapman earned a degree in engineering from Brigham Young University and a master’s and Ph.D. in public policy from George Mason University. He and his wife are longtime residents of Loudoun County, Va. Chapman is an appointee of the Governor of Virginia.

Barbara Lang has served as president and chief executive officer of the D.C. chamber of commerce since 2002.  In this role, she manages the operations and strategic direction of the largest Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.  She has developed several initiatives on revenue generation, public policy issues, education information, and business development leading to it being ranked the No. 1 chamber of commerce for six consecutive years by the Washington Business Journal. Prior to joining the Chamber, Lang served as a senior-level vice president at Fannie Mae and in several top management positions with IBM, ranging from administration to product forecasting. Lang was recently named one of the 150 most powerful people in the District by Washingtonian Magazine and has earned numerous awards and recognition for her business acumen, community engagement and management. She and her husband live in Washington, D.C. Lang is an appointee of the Mayor of the District of Columbia.

Caren Merrick is a partner with Bibury Partners, an investment and advisory firm that focuses on enterprise and consumer technology sectors. Merrick served as co-founder and executive vice president of webMethods, Inc., a business-to-business software solution company. She was co-founder, president, and chairman of the webMethods Foundation/118 Foundation, providing financial grants to non-profits to help lower income families in the areas of education, economic development, health care and housing in the greater Washington, D.C. area and in Africa. She has served on the Board of Directors of Inova Healthcare Services, the Northern Virginia Technology Council, Greater DC Cares, CharityWorks, Fairfax Symphony and as a member of the technology subgroup on Virginia’s Economic Development and Jobs Creation Commission. Merrick was named a 2011 Top 100 Technology Titan by Washingtonian Magazine. Merrick is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles, and earned a certificate of director education from the National Association of Corporate Directors. Merrick lives in Fairfax County, Va. with her husband and their two sons. She is an appointee of the Governor of Virginia.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority was established in 1987 by the governments of Virginia and the District of Columbia to manage and operate Washington’s Ronald Reagan National and Dulles International airports, which together serve more than 40 million passengers a year. The Airports Authority also operates and maintains the Dulles Airport Access Road and the Dulles Toll Road and manages construction of the Silver Line project, a 23-mile extension of the Washington region’s Metrorail system into Loudoun County, Va. No taxpayer money is used to operate the toll road, which is funded by toll revenues, or the airports, which are funded through aircraft landing fees, rents and revenues from concessions. The Silver Line construction is funded by a combination of toll-road revenues, airport contributions and federal, state and local government appropriations. The Airports Authority is led by a 17- member board of directors appointed by the governors of Virginia, Maryland, the mayor of Washington, D.C., and the president of the United States.

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